Grenada, Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines have sought assistance from TFAF to identify implementation partners for several of their TFA category C commitments. The TFAF was unable to identify development partners that are in a position to provide the required assistance, so the three Members are now in the process of applying for a TFAF project grant.

On 21 May 2024, the TFAF organized a dialogue, together with CARICOM and the OECS Secretariat, attended by representatives of 11 CARICOM WTO Members, as well as the World Bank Group and the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council.

Participants shared experience in implementing the TFA provisions on Authorized Operators (Art. 7.6), Fees and Charges (Article 6.1 and 6.2) and Advanced Ruling (Article 3) and discussed the future design of the three project applications.

The specificity of the projects is that they incorporate a partnership between Members in the region, to promote dialogue, foster harmonization, and peer-learning on trade facilitation. The dialogue and participants' suggestions allowed TFAF to clearly design the partnership dimension of the future projects and to build ownership amongst Members.

The TFAF also met with representatives from Jamaica to discuss their capacity needs in the area of Coordinated Inspection (Article 8). They require expert support to review job profiles and training programmes for customs officials in view of carrying out delegated control measures for other government agencies. The TFAF will liaise with development partners to identify partners to respond to this need.

In addition to the dialogue held in Barbados, the TFAF also met with the National Trade Facilitation Committee (NTFC) of Grenada 28 May and Guyana 30 May to discuss the specific domestic capacity gaps that the future projects aim to address and other project specific details. During the discussions in Grenada, the NTFC requested support from TFAF to strengthen the NTFC with regard to its preparatory work on the Single Window (Article 10.4).